Now we are six!

It's hard to believe, but mah babee is six. The skinny little munchkin that we brought home almost five years ago weighs 40 pounds and is now reading (sorta), in training to be a prima ballerina (Chinese-style) and getting ready for her investiture into Girl Scouts.

Of course, we are celebrating Madeline Birth Month instead of her birthday alone. Her actual birthday was February 22nd. She was home from school that day (ice storm), and fortunately, I had the forethought to pick up an ice cream cake the day before at our neighborhood Baskin-Robbins. I love to bake, but my munchkin doesn't like cake and has been telling us for weeks that she wanted "one of those cakes made out of ice cream." As she's having an expensive birthday party next weekend, Kevin and I gave her a few small trinkets from the toy department at Target -- it takes so little to make her happy -- and some spring clothes. On Sunday, her Grammie and Gramps gave her more birthday gifts.

On Saturday morning, she was entertaining herself by journaling. Since last summer, Madeline has done this. She started pulling magazines off the coffee table or cans and boxes from the pantry or the newspaper, then she'd sit at the kitchen table and copy the words off these items onto clean paper filched from my printer. I'd find pages of 8 1/2 x 11 paper with dozens of words written in pencil or mini-marker: "Scientific American," "National Geographic," "Washington Post," "Quaker Chewy Granola Bars," "90 Calories," "Del Monte Lite Pear Halves," you get the idea. Last fall, she progressed from publications and merchandise to stories about her world. They're doing this kind of writing in school, and they encourage the kids just to get it all out on paper and not worry about spelling at this time, just to spell things like they sound.

So she presented me one of her stories on Saturday:

I asked her to translate the next to the last sentence: "Mom I want to you bow down to Mego [she calls herself "Meko" after the little forest animal that befriends Pocohontas in the Disney cartoon] because Mego is the Queen of the Rabbits. But Rabbie [her white rabbit "lovey"] is my baby." Okay.... I made a big production of bowing and scraping, and she loved it.

So late Sunday afternoon, I arrive home from the grocery story to see my sister-in-law Alice's SUV parked out front. Nothing unusual there. Occasionally, she drops by our place on Saturday or Sunday afternoon. Inside, Kevin was assembling ... a THRONE. Yes, Alice brought the Queen of the Rabbits her own throne. She said she and Rebecca (Madeline's cousin) saw the throne somewhere and just had to get it. It was the perfect present, they thought.

And no, they had not heard that Madeline had crowned herself Queen of the Rabbits the day before.